Movie Review: 'Azhar' Is An Unexciting Take On The Cricketer's Life

Even in the most insipid films, Hashmi gives his all. Even in some of his earliest films, like 'Gangster', 'Murder' and the first 'Jannat', and before the tag of “actor” got attached to him, Hashmi didn’t seem like a lazy artiste. A few years ago, Hashmi took on films that weren’t exactly box office baits – Dibakar Banerjee’s 'Shanghai', Raj Kumar Gupta’s 'Ghanchakkar' and the Vishal Bhardwaj-produced 'Ek Thi Daayan'. Each of them tanked, and Hashmi returned to his comfort zone: “commercial” films like 'Raja Natwarlal' and 'Mr X', both of which met with a similar fate. It’s an unenviable position to be in: the risks don’t pay off, the safe bets turn into duds. Hashmi himself, though, almost never disappointed in these films.

In Tony D'souza’s 'Azhar', too, the actor seems remarkably committed to his role, even though everything else around him does little justice to the actor’s efforts.

The makers insist 'Azhar' isn’t a biopic on beleaguered former Indian cricketer Mohammad Azharuddin, even though almost everything about its promotional campaign hinted at it. It’s a film “based on true incidents”, or so we are supposed to believe, and the match-fixing scandal and Azharuddin’s much publicized affair (and subsequent marriage) with Sangeeta Bijlani are only backdrops for the real story. What that story is never becomes clear. Is this a film about a fallen hero? Is it an extra-marital drama? Is it a sports film?

The one thing Azhar does diligently is try to humanize Azharuddin for audiences – an interesting proposition if the depiction was authentic. Instead, we get a highly sanitized interpretation, with the man being portrayed as a boringly straightforward guy who strives to achieve justice and battles with his attraction towards a woman.

If the intention was never to genuinely portray events, it must have been at least to capitalize on the salacious parts of the sportsman’s life, making it a sensationalist piece of filmmaking a la 'The Dirty Picture'. But D’Souza and writer Rajat Arora don’t even turn the film into a consistently pulpy affair, instead maintaining an air of seriousness that takes away some of the bite.

Arora and Hashmi are some sort of Dream Team for single screen audiences, the writer having given the actor some memorable roles in films like 'Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai' and 'The Dirty Picture', dialoguebaazi et al. It’s an element that falls flat here, because there is a general lack of clarity on how they want Azharuddin to be presented. Hashmi’s penchant for crooked characters is what makes him such a great candidate for the role, but stripping him off that edginess in favour of a clean-cut portrayal renders the character boring.

Yet, Arora manages to keep things engaging in the first half, moving back and forth between Azhar’s life in a crisp manner. The second half is a drag, though. Azhar’s extramarital affair with Sangeeta (Nargis Fakhri) seems like a track from several previously-seen Hashmi films. Both female leads, Prachi Desai and Nargis Fakhri, suffer on account of poor character arcs and, often, horrendous make-up. The court proceedings lack a dramatic undercurrent; Azhar’s defence counsel (an efficient Kunaal Roy Kapur) is a bumbling fool who punches into thin air for eight years before magically coming up with an argument that tilts the scales in the cricketer’s favour.

In the film’s climax, Arora uses an interesting screenplay device, intercutting the judge’s final verdict with one of Azhar’s swashbuckling innings in a match he was accused of throwing away. It’s in addressing Azhar’s role in the match-fixing scandal that the film really suffers – clearly exonerating him, instead of leaving things ambiguous. This resurrection seems like a bitter pill to swallow.

D’Souza fails to make the on-field action interesting. A tight close-up of a bowler delivering a ball is followed by another tight close-up of Azhar striking it, and finally a shot of the ball crossing the boundary rope; this is repeated several times. Compared to the director’s earlier films, 'Blue' and 'Boss', though, Azhar is a considerable step-up.

Given the explosive material, the film could have been more than just barely watchable, especially because its lead actor had the goods to take it that extra mile. If you must subject yourself to 'Azhar', do it for Hashmi. His is a valiant innings in a losing cause.